Along with the motif, life is meaningless, Oskar feels like he has lost everything.
Oskar talks about being atheist, "which means that [he] didn't believe in things that couldn't be observed," (2) as well as not understanding why people exist, which relates to unexplained events. Oskar claims, "just because you're atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have a reason for why they are," (13).
I think that this book show that your life is meaningless, excetp to those who you are close to. I think this is why Oskar is always Opening up to strangers, because the more people he becomes close to, the more people who see his life as significant.
Oskar throughout the book is trying to find the purpose of his life. Atheism is defined as believing that there is no God or supreme power. I think that Oskar is feeling all of the emotions and loneliness he feels because does not have faith or trust in a God who has control over everyone's lives and the things they go through.
“Well, what I don’t get is why do we exist? I don’t mean how, but why.” I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, “We exist because we exist.” “What the?” “We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.” (13)
"Now that I'm thinking about it," I told Gerald, "they could make an incredibly long limousine that had its back seat at your mom's VJ and its front seat at your mausoleum, and it would be as long as your life (5)." This shows Oskar feeling like life could be a straight line from beginning to end, and it wouldn't matter.
"I believed that once you're dead, you're dead forever, and you don't feel anything, and you don't even dream (4)." This shows that life is meaningless and that once you're dead, that's it. Your life is over.
I think it might be scary for him to think that his dad is "living" somewhere else, in some heaven or afterlife. I think the thought of that can make a younger mind confused. It may possibly make accepting his fathers death harder if Oskar thinks his father is still feeling things and dreaming.
"I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so terrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?"(p.145)
I feel like the reason Oskar feels life is meaningless is because his father died. Most 9 year old children don't think about how there is no point in life and because of his dad's death it crosses his mind more often.
"I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all." (86). This quotation is followed by a passage where his dad explains to him how he can change the course of human history.
This quote suggests that Oskar may get heavy boots from the feeling that life is significant.
On pages 121 through 123, is Oskar's grandmother's life story. However, because of her poor eyesight, she was unaware that what she typed never actually showed up on the page. Everything she ever experienced and consequently wrote about symbolically amounted to nothing, therefore hinting that life is essentially meaningless.
One interesting question to ask about Oskar is, is there a connection between his religious beliefs, and somewhat pessimistic behavior. Through what we've read so far he hasn't shown that he really believes in anything greater, which like most anyone would make him dour and sad about most all the events that happen to him.
One interesting thing that I found about this theme is that even though Oskar believes that his life has taken a spin of meaninglessness that he has now found a meaning to live, finding his father mentally.
After he lost his father, Oskar feels as if he has lost the meaning for his life. The entire point, I believe, of this book is Oskar trying to find a new reason to live, along with trying to find out more about his old one.
I completely agree with this comment due to the belief that I feel Oskar has almost completely given up. I feel that even if Oskar is trying to find a knew purpose to live, he doesn't want to try because he just keeps getting and thinking about disappointments.
On page 145, Oskar says, "I felt that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it?" In this quote, Oskar is trying to find out the significance of people and why we are here. This quote is also linked to Hamlet.
“I can’t live, I’ve tried and I can’t. If that sounds simple, it’s simple like a mountain is simple.” (135)
(I was going to have a shot at explaining this quote, but it's harder than I thought it would be... I feel like it fits under "life is meaningless", though. Any thoughts?)
I feel like, because Oskar has not found his reason to live, the things he says are seemingly meaningless, immature, and insensitive.
"...I got a paper cut on my forefinger and bled a little flower onto the page on which I should have seen her kissing somebody, but this was all I saw." (pg 120-123) (The quote follows with blank pages. The blank pages represent his grandmother's life story and connects to the central purpose that life is meaningless. This relates to Oskar and how he believes that life is meaningless.
This quote comes from when Oskar and Mr. Black go up the Empire State building: "I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.
You can fight it all you want, but loss is out of your control connects to life being meaningless, because if Oskar believes he has no control over his life, he may consider it meaningless.
Life being meaningless has a very strong connection with death.
I believe that all of these quotes somewhat get across the same point that life is meaningless unless you try to change that and go for the better of things, searching for significance.
Oskar is obvoiusly feeling pain, be it his fathers death or not getting attention, or maybe the pain he is causing himself both physically and mentally. Everyone has a different way of coping with pain Oskar seems to hurt himself to get attention to subside the reprecussions of his fathers death. Oskar might think that life is meaninglewss because it seems to him that he has nothing to live for because he is feeling so much pain from day to day, he might be coping by shutting out the world and trying to find an escape from the feelings he is experiencing.
This links to the idea of searching for the light in New York from the top of the Empire State Building.
The idea of life meaning meaningless connects to the nonexistence or blankness motif
Oskar's need to invent raisons de e'tre connects to the idea that life is menaingless
When Oskar talks about how life is meaningless, it troubles me because he's only 9 years old and he is already contemplating death. He asks himself why is death so bad, and whats wrong with never feeling emotion. Then he imagines that he is acting out in his school play, shouting absurd lines and going off about all the stupid things kids do from making prank calls to terrorizing old people. The random thoughts that take place in Oskars mind confuse me, but make me want to keep reading to see what other crazy stuff happens.
Every person handles their pain differently as if they knew that life was meaningless.
Oskar thinks that his father will vanish because his life wasnt important that he and his fathers are meaningless.